So Marc, what is your solution?   I have heard many others rise concerns about gentrification over the years, but few solutions.    As a silly old engineer, I am left to conclude that the default solution is to allow neighborhoods to continue to suffer because that depresses the price of the housing stock. 

Seven or eight years ago, I had the good fortune to sit at a lunch table with two major advocates of minorities and low income populations.  Since as an engineer just learning about the good and the bad associated with Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Context Sensitive Solutions ...  I shared my concerns with these two folks who had devoted their careers to supporting social equity.  Their answer:

The solution to affordable housing and social equity is to not stop making improvements/investments that raise property values and rebalance the transportation system.  NO NO Absolutely NO, I was told, the solution is not to perpetuate "slums",  it is TO MAKE EVERY OTHER PLACE WALKABLE AND MIXED USE.   Who are we kidding -- I was told -- "do critics raising the gentrification flag honestly believe that folks are better off where they are."

When I went back to my work at NJ Department of Transportation, the meaning of what these two folks told me became more clear.    One of the problems my office had to solve was how to deal with the ordeal that low income wage earners faced in commuting 90 minutes to two hours from "affordable" neighborhoods in  inner cities to the job supply in car oriented suburbs.   Low income workers often had to take two to three buses because of the suburban densities and car orientation -- the result of pricing the system to advantage middle income car owners.   When they got to the work site, they were dropped of onto a high speed 100% car oriented arterial designed to cater to the middle class car owners -- and literally, their were several fatalities a year, involving workers trying to dash across the roadway to get from the bus stop to the worksite.   It became clear that the system was planned, designed and priced -- rigged -- to further disenfranchise this already struggling segment of our population.  

So, I ask again, what is your solution if it is not rebalancing the system by pricing, smart growth, and multimodal transportation?  Does your analysis about the Boston to Washington corridor reveal how many of the unemployed and minimum wage families can afford multiple cars and whether they can afford the gas to make those 500 mile commutes?   Am I wrong in presuming that minimum wage folks are less likely to own Prius's and more likely to own -- if at all -- a gas guzzler?

Please consider this a serious question.  As a transportation engineer, I am still trying to learn who to deal with the inequities of a car oriented transportation system. 


On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, <mbrenman001@comcast.net> wrote:

Hi Gary, this is based on a per trip cost, due to lack of discretionary income to pay for tolls.  A twenty to fifty year period is just too long to make useful estimates for.  The pricing estimates are almost always too low, by 40 to 200% percent, for large projects, and the ridership estimates too high.  Both of these factors were in evidence in the Cal High Speed Rail project.  In the case of San Francisco, the study cited, very few low income people still live in the city, since rent control (another initiative that seemed like a good idea at the time) is destroying the housing stock and raising rents through the roof to the moon.  Seemingly good initiatives like light rail down Third Street to Bay View/Hunter's Point are creating gentrification that is driving out the last African-American community in SF.


Those who like congestion pricing, tolls, and cordons say that much of the revenue from them will be devoted to better mass transit, but this has happened nowhere in the US, and in only a couple of cities in Scandinavia.  And California, even the Bay Area, isn't Scandinavia...In the US, the tolls go almost entirely to paying for the tolling system, including the salaries of those who administer it, the private contractors who provide the electronic sensing equipment and software, and the law enforcement officials who enforce it.


If you want to see evidence of how tolls work in practice, drive north-south on the East Coast.  One can easy pay over $30 in tolls from DC to Boston, one-way.  If I'm unemployed or earning minimum wage, how will I pay that?  And gas and insurance and maintenance.  I might get forced onto a “chinatown” bus.  This will still cost me about $48 one way.  Lower income people already pay a higher percent of their family income on transportation than higher income people.  Imposition of congestion pricing, tolls, and cordons just sticks it to them more.  One end result is less social and physical mobility, and less ability to get to jobs.  One can say, well, those folks should just take public transportation.  But shouldn’t they have the same choices as other people in the US?  And many jobs, shopping, and educational opportunities can’t be accessed by public transportation without a huge investment in time.  So lower income people forced onto public transportation often become time poor as well.  

Marc



From: "Gary Toth" <garytoth51@gmail.com>
To: "TRB Health and Transportation" <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>, mbrenman001@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:51:50 PM
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing


Marc, is your conclusion based on a study of the overall life cycle of how congestion pricing can change land use and transportation infrastructure over a 20 to 50 year period, or is it based on the immediate per trip cost?   Also, if you are citing a study, did that study evaluate how many of the lower income folks are commuting in from the suburbs, as opposed to already living within the "priced zone" and therefore who might benefit from a re-pricing of the trip into the center?

Gary

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:26 PM, <mbrenman001@comcast.net> wrote:
Unfortunately, congestion and road pricing have economically regressive effects on low income people.
Marc Brenman
Social Justice Consultancy
mbrenman001@comcast.net
240-676-2436


From: "Megan Wier" <Megan.Wier@sfdph.org>
To: h+t--friends@chrispy.net
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:18:27 AM
Subject: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing



Hi everyone -

   I wanted to share the following report summarizing the findings of a
   health impact assessment (HIA) of a potential road pricing program in
   San Francisco conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public
   Health's Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability as I thought it
   may be of interest to the list.  The HIA was completed this Fall with
   funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living Research
   Program.  A summary and detailed technical report of the findings are
   available at:  http://www.sfphes.org/HIA_Road_Pricing.htm.

   For the HIA analysis, SFDPH used a variety of methods to assess
   potential transportation-related health effects - including air
   quality-related premature mortality, traffic noise-related annoyance and
   heart attacks, injury to pedestrians and cyclists, and health benefits
   from active transportation – and evaluated health-related equity effects
   and associated economic value.  The HIA found that transportation system
   operation in San Francisco has substantial health burdens and benefits
   today.  Health burdens are expected to increase in the future owing to
   increasing motor vehicles on local roadways and increasing population
   densities in already congested areas.  However, there are also estimated
   increases in active transportation (walking and biking) that bring some
   health benefits and save lives.  Road pricing, if implemented, could
   moderate but not entirely eliminate the changes associated with a future
   under “business as usual” that includes increasing populations and
   traffic and no new policies or funding to manage the transportation
   system. Road pricing could also generate significant economic value by
   reducing transportation-related adverse effects and increasing walking
   and biking.  HIA recommendations include increasing congestion pricing
   fees where they can reduce health risks (e.g., on spare the air days)
   and investing in targeted infrastructure to reduce pedestrian and
   cyclist injury and increase active transportation.

   Thank you, and happy holidays!
   -------------------------------------------------------------
   Megan L. Wier, MPH, Epidemiologist
   Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability
   San Francisco Department of Public Health
   phone: 415-252-3972, fax: 415-252-3964
   Megan.Wier@sfdph.org
   www.sfphes.org

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